sit, but I remained standing.
She smiled for the first time and her eyes became softer and
shinier. She was not as pretty as Josefina, and yet she was the
most beautiful of all of them.
We were quiet for a moment. In terms of an explanation
she said that they had done their best in the years since the
Nagual left, and that because of their dedication they had be-
come accustomed to the task that he had left for them to
perform.
I did not quite understand what she was talking about, but
as she spoke I felt more than ever the presence of don Juan. It
was not that she was copying his manners, or the inflection
of his voice. She had an inner control that made her act
the way don Juan did. Their similarity was from the inside
out.
I told her that I had come because I needed Pablito’s and
Nestor’s help. I said that I was rather slow or even stupid in
understanding the ways of sorcerers, but that I was sincere,
and yet all of them had treated me with malice and deceit-
fulness.
She began to apologize but I did not let her finish. I picked
up my things and went out the front door. She ran after me.
She was not preventing me from leaving but rather she was
talking very fast, as if she needed to say all she could before I
drove away.
She said that I had to hear her out, and that she was willing
to ride with me until she had told me everything the Nagual
had entrusted her to tell me.
I’m going to Mexico City, I said.
I’ll ride with you to Los Angeles if necessary, she said,
and I knew that she meant it.
All right, I said just to test her, get in the car.
She vacillated for an instant, then she stood silently and
faced her house. She put her clasped hands just below her
navel. She turned and faced the valley and did the same move-
ment with her hands.
I knew what she was doing. She was saying good-bye to
her house and to those awesome round hills that surrounded
it.
Don Juan had taught me that good-bye gesture years be-
fore. He had stressed that it was an extremely powerful ges-
ture, and that a warrior had to use it sparingly. I had had very
few occasions to perform it myself.
The good-bye movement la Gorda was executing was a
variant of the one don Juan had taught me. He had said that
the hands were clasped as in prayer, either gently or with
great speed, even producing a clapping sound. Done either
way, the purpose of clasping the hands was to imprison the
feeling that the warrior did not wish to leave behind. As soon
as the hands had closed in and captured that feeling, they were
taken with great force to the middle of the chest, at the level
of the heart. There the feeling became a dagger and the war-
rior stabbed himself with it, as if holding the dagger with both
hands.
Don Juan had told me that a warrior said good-bye in that
fashion only when he had reason to feel he might not come
back.
La Gorda’s good-bye enthralled me.
Are you saying good-bye? I asked out of curiosity.
Yes, she said dryly.
Don’t you put your hands to your chest? I asked.
Men do that. Women have wombs. They store their feel-
ings there.
Aren’t you suppose to say good-bye like that only when
you’re not coming back? I asked.
Chances are I may not come back, she replied. I’m going
with you.
I had an attack of unwarranted sadness, unwarranted in the
sense that I did not know that woman at all. I had only doubts
and suspicions about her. But as I peered into her clear eyes I
had a sense of ultimate kinship with her. I mellowed. My
anger had disappeared and given way to a strange sadness. I
looked around, and I knew that those mysterious, enormous,
round hills were ripping me apart.
Those hills over there are alive, she said, reading my
thoughts.
I turned to her and told her that both the place and the
women had affected me at a very deep level, a level I could not
ordinarily conceive. I did not know which was more devastat-
ing, the place or the women. The women’s onslaughts had
been direct and terrifying, but the effect of those hills was a
constant, nagging apprehension, a desire to flee from them.
When I told that to la Gorda she said that I was correct in
assessing the effect of that place, that the Nagual had left them
there because of that effect, and that I should not blame any-
one for what had happened, because the Nagual himself had
given those women orders to try to do away with me.
Did he give orders like that to you too? I asked.
No, not to me. I’m different than they are, she said.
They are sisters. They are the same, exactly the same. Just
like Pablito, Nestor and Benigno are the same. Only you and
I can be exactly the same. We are not now because you’re still
incomplete. But someday we will be the same, exactly the
same.
I’ve been told that you’re the only one who knows where
the Nagual and Genaro are now, I said.
She peered at me for a moment and shook her head affirma-
tively.
That’s right, she said. I know where they are. The
Nagual told me to take you there if I can.
I told her to stop beating around the bush and to reveal their
exact whereabouts to me immediately. My demand seemed to
plunge her into chaos. She apologized and reassured me that
later on, when we were on our way, she would disclose every-
thing to me. She begged me not to ask her about them any-
more because she had strict orders not to mention anything
until the right moment.
Lidia and Josefina came to the door and stared at me. I
hurriedly got in the car. La Gorda got in after me, and as she
did I could not help observing that she had entered the car as
she would have entered a tunnel. She sort of crawled in. Don
Juan used to do that. I jokingly said once, after I had seen him
do it scores of times, that it was more functional to get in the
way I did. I thought that perhaps his lack of familiarity with
automobiles was responsible for his strange way of entering.
He explained then that the car was a cave and that caves had
to be entered in that fashion if we were going to use them.
There was an inherent spirit to caves, whether they were
natural or man-made, and that that spirit had to be approached
with respect. Crawling was the only way of showing that
respect.
I was wondering whether or not to ask la Gorda if don
Juan had instructed her about such details, but she spoke first.
She said that the Nagual had given her specific instructions
about what to do in case I would survive the attacks of dona
Soledad and the three girls. Then she casually added that be-
fore I headed for Mexico City we had to go to a specific place
in the mountains where don Juan and I used to go, and that
there she would reveal all the information the Nagual had
never disclosed to me.
I had a moment of indecision, and then something in me
which was not my reason made me head for the mountains.
We drove in complete silence. I attempted at various oppor-
tune moments to start up a conversation, but she turned me
down every time with a strong shake of her head. Finally she
seemed to have gotten tired of my trying and said forcefully
that what she had to say required a place of power and until
we were in one we had to abstain from draining ourselves with
useless talk.
After a long drive and an exhausting hike away from the
road, we finally reached our destination. It was late afternoon.
We were in a deep canyon. The bottom of it was already
dark, while the sun was still shining on the top of the moun-
tains above it. We walked until we came to a small cave a few
feet up the north side of the canyon, which ran from east to
west. I used to spend a great deal of time there with don Juan.
Before we entered the cave, la Gorda carefully swept the
floor with branches, the way don Juan used to, in order to
clear the ticks and parasites from the rocks. Then she cut a
large heap of small branches with soft leaves from the sur-